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Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is a television program written and hosted by Charlie Brooker, a British Caustic Critic, about television and how it's made. The show is similar in content to the Screen Burn columns that Brooker wrote until recently for The Guardian. Started in 2006 and ended in 2008.

The show usually involves a couple of different segments. He reviews shows and programs, with a shot similar to the one at the top of the page of him in the living room of his house with his remote (and often various other peripherals such as a laptop, or PS2 or Guitar Hero controllers), scathingly reviewing whatever's on screen. Secondly the show often has segments that show how difficult and painful it is to make a television program, or what a career in television is like. The show also features animations by internet animator David Firth (of Salad Fingers fame), and various other famous (or not) people talking about various aspects of television.

Part of Screenwipe's appeal is the Sophisticated as Hell contrast of watching Charlie swing between being an incisive, intelligent commentator on modern culture and a poo-flinging Man Child bellowing profanity at the screen and pretending to masturbate.

The show inspired Yahtzee's review style, and is generally a very entertaining and educational watch, even if you're not a fan of television. Due to the nature of the show, it makes excellent viewing for tropers.

A new series in 2013 called Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe essentially combined elements of Newswipe (such as Doug Stanhope's monologues) and the original Screenwipe. Tropes for that show go on this page.

Biting-the-Hand Humor: The BBC, and production company Endemol. Both pay his bills, and both get speared quite often on his show. Television in general - Stewart Lee mocks him in his sketch for essentially being part of the machine he is criticizing. Brooker himself likened it to being a particularly sarcastic bird, sitting in a crocodile's mouth.

Black Comedy: And lots of it, such as adding slide-whistle effects to the opening titles of Animal Hospital.

Credits Pushback: Or more accurately, a constant battle against it. Brooker hates the BBC's policy of squashing and speaking over the credits, and one episode's unforgettable denouement featured him standing gagged and furiously saluting "our lords and masters" as the credits rolled. The poor announcer who had drawn the short straw sounded more than a little embarrassed.

Additional attempts to flummox the continuity rules included scrolling the credits in the middle of the show, and putting an ass with eyes stuck to it in front of a microphone so you could pretend the voice over guy was literally an ass. The cherry on the top was the announcer saying villainously "Yes Charlie, Merry Christmas to you too. But you're forgetting! We can squeeze it! And you won't feel a thing!"

Strictly, there's no rule about when credits can be shown. So most shows put them at the end, but they're allowed maybe a minute or so stinger afterwards. Brooker took advantage of this by running them 10 seconds after the starting sequence, pretending the show had ended (making any pushback voiceover on the credits completely useless) and getting Victoria Coren, of all people, to run a fake documentary about corners before performing a Hostile Show Takeoverof his own show and going into a rant against this trope. Since he'd already run the credits, there was nothing at the end and the episode just slammed straight back into the adverts.

He mentioned this again in context of Doctor Who, demanding to know the point of getting an orchestra to record Doctor Who's Theme Tune if they're just going to talk all over it.

Description Cut: In a piece about shooting sprees in America, a psychologist is interviewed on the news and gives advice about how to avoid sensationalising such events, intercut with news channels doing exactly what he warned against.

Executive Meddling: A segment on the Queen's Christmas Speech was cut from the "A Very Screenwipe Christmas" episode at the request of the BBC and replaced with a slide stating just that... accompanied by System of a Down's "We Attack". In a milder example, Brooker says in another segment about The X Factor that Dermot O'Leary is a "really nice guy", accompanied by a caption saying this was at the insistence of his producer.

Fan Disservice: He spends an entire episode shirtless. It's not likely to be a titillating sight.

At the ending of one episode in which he commented on the double standard regarding male and female nudity, he said that over the end credits he would make up for it by having full, unsimulated sex, to climax, with a loaf of bread. He has The Grunting Orgasm, then looks down at the bread on his penis, says "Oh, I feel depressed now," and wanders off forlornly with the bread still attached.

Hypocritical Humour: Especially about the way TV shows are made. Also, in the 2007 retrospective the storm of scandals over faked phone-in contests and a misleading trailer about the Queen damaged people's trust in TV as a whole, illustrated by asking a member of the public:

Charlie: Do you believe anything you see on TV? Interviewee: Yeah. Charlie: Would you mind...just for this...saying that you don't believe anything? Is that all right? [cut] Charlie: Do you believe anything you see on TV? Interviewee: No, not really.

Lampshade Hanging: During the show, they claimed they interviewed "TV insiders", but to conceal their identity, they filmed them in a darkened room, and used one of the researchers in their place instead.

Logic Bomb: In an episode that examines televisual trickery used to bend the truth, Charlie presents the "Truthbot 2000", a deliberately low-budget prop he claims can detect falsehoods and alert the viewers. Truthbot instantly points out that it is just a box with some lights and circuits inside with a voice dubbed on later. Charlie asks it how it knows this if it's just a cheap prop, the paradox causes it to overload and explode.

In Weekly Wipe's 2013 wrap-up, a screen full of penises are displayed for a few seconds as parity for showing several scenes from the uncensored video of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines".

Manipulative Editing: A segment about reality television demonstrated quite aptly that with exactly the same footage, you can create almost any narrative you want.

Metaphorgotten: 24 "is like a bag of pistachio nuts, really. You have keep reaching for one more, before you know it, your table is covered in empty shells and your fingers stink of salt. Actually, that's where the analogy breaks down."

Name McAdjective: The most obvious example, "Shouty McHeadwoundman", is from Newswipe. "Dermot Q Thingie", "Kate Hugamaboobs" were his names for the hosts of The X Factor. Piers Morgan was dubbed "Shitslug O'Ballbags". He also likes to use funny names or 'thingy' for people whose names he can't be bothered to remember.

And of course his frequent interview subject Barry Shitpeas

Odd Friendship: In his Screen Burn columns in The Guardian, he always held the opinion that humanity would be fractionally improved if everyone who had ever appeared on Big Brother was loaded into a rocket and fired into the Sun, and in one episode of Screenwipe he reviewed the seventh series of Big Brother with no softening of this view. Later on he became friends with one of the most memorable contestants of that series, glamour model Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace, (occasionally referred in Screen Burn as "my improbable friend Aisleyne") and she appeared in a few episodes and Screemwipe Christmas specials. He lampshaded this in at least one article, admitting that actually meeting such people did make him feel a bit bad about subjecting them to such venom.

Having dismissed Britannia High's apparent theme, that vapid pop stardom is the pinnacle of achievement:

Everyone knows that having your own low-budget show on BBC4, where you sit around and pick holes in the things, that is where...true...greatness...(breaks down sobbing)

While discussing Paul Ross' Big Black Book of Horror:

Seriously, who the hell's going to tune in just to watch some unattractive, increasingly paunchy and irrelevant TV presenter just sitting around on his own in his house, just talking...and talking...and talking...(gets sad face)

From the beginning of the very first episode: "In fact, I'm probably well on my way to being the worst TV presenter you've ever seen."

Sex Sells: Attacked in #10 of "The Ten Biggest Cocks in Advertising": "I think mortgages should have holes you can put your nob in!"

Note that while Charlie's speech is censored, clips from shows he's reviewing aren't.

Lampshaded in one bit of the show where it's revealed that Charlie censors himself via a foot pedal (A Rock Band drumkit pedal) which he presses down on whenever he says the f-word, thus creating the sound effect beep.

Brooker explained this disparity on Twitter, saying that bleeped swearing is funnier.

Totally Radical: In the links for a segment on yoof TV, Charlie is dressed in a hoodie, baggy jeans and a chunky gold chain.

TV is largely run by people in their thirties who only dimly remember what it's like to be young. Consequently, when TV tries to court youth, it ends up looking as ridiculous as I do right now. Y'GET ME?

Trivially Obvious: Vapid commentators Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas are often given descriptions like "Lifeform," "Entity" or "Vertebrate".

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